This Department is conducted in the interest of stamp and coin collectors, and the Editor will be pleased to answer any question on these subjects so far as possible. Correspondents should address Editor Stamp Department.
The new Trinidad stamps are on the market, and make a handsome set. The central figure is Britannia, and the values are printed in different colors.
| ½ | penny, mauve, value in green. |
| 1 | penny, mauve, value in red. |
| 2½ | penny, mauve, value in blue. |
| 4 | penny, mauve, value in orange. |
| 5 | penny, mauve, value in mauve. |
| 6 | penny, mauve, value in black. |
| 1 | shilling, green, value in red. |
| 5 | shilling, green, value in vermillion. |
| 10 | shilling, green, value in blue. |
| 1 | pound, green, value in red. |
The last three are double the size of the smaller values.
The proposed New York Philatelic Club house is still in the air. Over one hundred subscriptions of $25 each have been received, and new subscribers are coming in every day, but the difficulty of obtaining a suitable house has blocked the plan for the present. The committee has been offered several houses at a rent of $2000 per year, but this is a little more than they care to pay at present. In London there has been no such difficulty.
I cannot too strongly impress upon collectors the necessity of handling valuable stamps with care. A startling instance has just come under my observation. I was shown an album the owner of which collected stamps from 1868 to 1875 inclusive. Page after page was filled, with all the stamps in the spaces set apart for them, stamps of which large dealers to-day have no stock. Had the stamps been in good condition, the value of the collection would be four or five thousand dollars. If in "first-class" condition, it would be difficult to duplicate at six or seven thousand dollars. Yet this collection was offered to all the dealers in the city for four hundred dollars, and not one of them would buy it. It was at last sold for three hundred and fifty dollars, and the dealer who bought it would have been glad to have sold it at once at an advance of twenty-five or fifty dollars. An inspection of the album by lovers of stamps almost brought tears to their eyes at seeing the way rare stamps had been maltreated. Hardly one scarce or rare stamp had escaped mutilation—perforations trimmed, pieces torn out of the body of the stamp, corners gone, backs "skinned," face of stamps rubbed, creased, or dirtied—in fact, almost every philatelic mistake possible had been made, and a fine collection utterly ruined. As a matter of course, in many instances the commonest stamps were in good, and in some cases in mint, condition. The explanation of this fact is that the commonest stamps had been replaced by better copies when the originals were torn, whereas the scarce stamps were scarce, and could not so easily be replaced.
George Werner, 277 Fairmont Ave., Newark, N.J., wishes to exchange with collectors in British colonies and South American countries.
Philatus.